Monday, December 6th, At Sea

Between breakfast and lunch we had the best intentions of getting some exercise on the promenade deck, but gave up after two miles (8 laps) as we were surprisingly tired and our upper thighs were aching. Not sure why that was, but possibly we had just stretched some things while walking on the wildly pitching deck the previous day.

After lunch we attended Missy's sixth and final "Spanish Survival Kit" session, which emphasized vocabulary to the airport and for driving a car. That was followed by a final presentation by Chris on "Awesome Antarctica" where he discussed the history and scenic wonders of Antarctica. The sights would be spectacular, but given the fate of many of the explorers in that region, I'm not at all sure I would like to stay there any length of time!

Because my conscience was bothering me about the environmental aspects of taking cruise ships, we attended the "Custodians of the Sea" presentation in the Wajang Theatre amidships. The video we watched was slickly produced and was, as expected, very upbeat about the environmental approach being taken by Holland America Line. I was relieved to find out, for example, that the waste food was burned along with paper waste in a shipboard incinerator rather than being dumped overboard. Similarly, the ship's sewage was treated to the point of meeting drinking water standards before being discharged into the sea. So in many respects HAL seemed to be really ahead of the curve in trying to meet environmental standards.

But the Veendam's chief environmental officer stayed for another 40 minutes of tough questioning by some very knowledgable audience members where some other information came out. The experimental process used in smokestack scrubbers to remove particulate matter had, for example, turned out to produce an undesirable change in the Ph of the seawater that would have adversely affected the sea life, and thus had to be abandoned. Also, the Veendams AC system still used R22 Freon as the replacement gas had proved to be too ineffective in actual use, and R22 is an ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon.

In the afternoon, we listened to the obligatory disembarkation talk and after that enjoyed the traditional presentation of all the hotel staff. The stewards even brought some of the towel animals that we enjoyed each evening. At the end the entertainment staff and the whole crew sang the traditional Holland American song "We Are Family".

At dinner we enjoyed the Adagio Strings playing some light classical quartets, and had our wait staff take a picture of our table. We also took a picture of our table waiter and the wine steward who always was always charming and pleasant although we never purchased a bottle of wine.

After dinner we attended the "Evening of Singing Sensations" which we thoroughly enjoyed. The amplification was low enough that I didn't have to use my earplugs and that made it much more pleasant. I still didn't like the way the reverberation and echo introduced in the amplification process altered the voices of the singers, but I'm probably very much in the minority in wanting to hear natural voices and instrumental sounds.